


Anagnorisis

by OritheReticent



Category: Scooby Doo - All Media Types, Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated (Cartoon 2010)
Genre: AU where Velma is Cassidy and Ricky's daughter, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:35:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27016633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OritheReticent/pseuds/OritheReticent
Summary: Fred may have been the only son of Brad and Judy, but he certainly wasn't the only child of the original Mystery Incorporated.
Relationships: Angel Dynamite | Cassidy Williams/Mr. E | Ricky Owens, Ricky Owens/Cassidy Williams
Comments: 11
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU role swap where Fred is not the only one to be a child of the original mystery incorporated. Fred is still Brad and Judy’s son, but in this, Velma is Cassidy and Ricky’s daughter. Inspired by StarRoseColors, particularly her tumblr and her story “Second Chances”  
> I will be writing a longer fic on this concept at some point because it has some of my favourite tropes and it’s one of my favourites.

It had been 15 years since Cassidy had been in the borders of Crystal Cove when she came back. 15 years since the Freak told them to never return or their families would suffer. Cassidy hadn’t ever considered going back, even when her parents had died. Of course, Cassidy had her reasons for staying away, the main one being her kidnapped daughter’s safety, just as Brad and Judy stayed away for their son’s safety. Cassidy tried not to think about it. It made her miserable if she dwelled on it too long. She had gotten a degree in music production and became a DJ, she rented an apartment less than a quarter mile away from the studio she worked at. Then, there was a knock at Cassidy’s door at 10 o’clock on a particularly cloudy night just before it started to storm. Cassidy rolled off of her couch she had been about to fall asleep on as the knocking started again. One knock, then a second later three knocks in rapid succession, then another knock a second later. It didn’t occur to Cassidy until later that she recognized the beat. She opened the door slowly while silently cursing whoever decided to wake her, just so she could see who was standing on the other side. The first thing she saw was a yellow and white striped shirt that she would recognize anywhere. The man standing in the doorway was a head taller than her, with long unkempt hair.

“What are you doing here, E?” she said, opening the door a little more, more out of familiarity than trust. She shivered in the cool air and water particles that rolled into her apartment, wrapping around her like jumping into a pool in November. Cassidy crossed her arms over her chest. It had just started raining and the water splattered around her bare toes.

“I have something I need to discuss with you,” he said, his grim, pale face revealing nothing of his intentions. Cassidy contemplated shutting the door and just going back to sleep. She watched as the cold water poured from the sky, landing in his already soaked hair and dripping down his face into his beard in droplets. Cassidy stepped back, allowing the door to swing open. 

“Alright, let’s have this conversation where it’s warm,” Cassidy didn’t turn her back, but she did back up enough that Ricky crept into her apartment, slowly, with deliberate steps, like the way a cat does when it tries to slip by it’s owners unnoticed. Cassidy wasn’t afraid, not of Ricky, not really. Water dripped from him soaking the floor, but his gaze never left her face and his expression never changed. 

“What is this about?” 

“Crystal Cove.”

“What about Crystal Cove?” she asked as she kicked the door shut. Typical.

Of course Ricky wouldn’t give her a straight answer.

“Have you been reading the papers?” 

“No,” she said, “why?”

“See for yourself,” he said, pulling a folded bit of rain soaked newspaper out of his pocket. Cassidy snatched it from him carefully, only to see four kids and a dog on the front page. She quickly skimmed the article. Four children and a talking dog had solved a town mystery involving a remote controlled robot. Cassidy read the names, Fredrick “Fred” Jones jr age 13, Daphne Blake age 12, Norville “Shaggy” Rogers age 13, Velma Dinkley age 11, and Scooby Doo age 3.

“Four kids and a talking animal,” said Cassidy as she examined the picture of the kids, “It’s happening again.” 

“Yes,” he said with a small shrug. 

“Hey, that boy looks like you,” she said, pointing at Shaggy Rogers, “looks like he’s got a dog though.”

“If that’s the case I’d gather the girl in the orange turtleneck is your equivalent,” he said, pointing at said girl, Velma Dinkley.

“Dinkley,” repeated Cassidy with a furrowed brow as she tried desperately to remember who she knew with that name. It came to her after a second, “oh, the woman who helped us with the mythology part of the scroll.” 

“Yes, and Jones, the man who helped with the history of the scroll.”

“Guess that’s why they look so familiar,” said Cassidy, Fred Jones’s appearance had immediately caught her attention, so had Velma Dinkley’s. Ricky nodded.

“I wondered the same,” he said, he paused, tucking his hands into his jacket pockets, “but that isn’t particularly important.”

“What are you getting at, E?” she said, throwing the paper onto a table, “so what? What do you want?”

“I would like your help. These children are like us, as you seemed to have already observed,” he replied, gesturing at the picture again.

Cassidy sighed, still unsure of what exactly he was getting at but not liking where it was going.

“They are bound to come across the curse at some point, no group has escaped it.”

“You’re going to stop them?” she asked, irritated, “you know how this goes, that won’t work.”

“No, I don’t want to stop them, I want to guide them.”

“Guide them? What are you gonna do? They’re teenagers, you’d be better off herding cats,” Cassidy said sarcastically, crossing her arms.

“Well, that would be the reason I am here tonight,” he said, then paused. Cassidy gestured for him to go on, so he continued, “I want your help guiding them, I want you to come back to Crystal Cove with me.”

Cassidy felt a shiver run up her spine, “Are you nuts? What about the Freak!”

“What  _ about  _ the Freak?” his eyebrows raised at that question, “what could it do? Our families are dead.” 

The memory of her infant daughter sleeping in Cassidy’s shaky arms flashed through her mind. ‘Not all of them.’ she thought. “What about Brad and Judy?”

“They have declined to participate.” 

“So that leaves just me?”

“And me.” 

“You say that you want these kids to avoid our mistakes?” quoted Cassidy sharply, “I don’t believe for a second that this is altruism.”

“Oh, my little Angel,” he teased, taking a step towards her, “I never said that this was altruism, at least not entirely.”

“You’re after the disk, aren’t you?” she said, defeated.

“Maybe,” he looked away from her, “did you know that the  _ bird  _ is still in the animal asylum?”

“Yeah?”

“Cassidy, if nothing is done, those children,” he said grabbing the paper and showing her the picture, “will be chased out of their homes, from their families, or killed,” he pushed the paper into her hand, “we are uniquely qualified to help them, and I guarantee that Pericles will not remain trapped for whatever is going to happen, we need to keep the disk away from him,” Ricky paused, an almost fire in his apathetic eyes, “or else.”

“Ricky, this is dangerous, what if the Freak actually catches us.”

“How would it know? We both have fake identities,” Ricky noticed the tightness around her lips, “Cassidy?” he asked, waiting for her to meet his eyes, “please?”

“You really think this is serious.”

Ricky nodded, “If Pericles gets the disk I believe that would be a matter of life and death, and we are the only ones who can prevent him.”

Cassidy shook her head. She would go back, she’d do it, for no other reason than she was convinced Ricky would end up destroying himself, but the Freak had told her that she could never go back to Crystal Cove or her daughter would be harmed. 

Cassidy took a deep breath, Ricky’s hands twitched in the silence, which he broke after a few moments. “Angel, do you really want to let  _ Pericles  _ get the disk? Because that is what will happen, and do you really want those kids to die? Because that will also happen eventually, I know you remember Pericles’s betrayal, do you really think he’ll be any more merciful to the new mystery solvers?”

This gave Cassidy a pause while she pondered this, she really didn’t want to admit that Ricky had a point, but he did, “nobody would know who we are?” 

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Cassidy sighed as she leaned against a wall, “What would I be doing exactly?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was fun to write. Special thanks to snailyslime, who suggested the song, which worked perfectly with the tone I tried to write this chapter with.

Cassidy wasn’t convinced that any of Ricky’s intentions were good ones. He didn’t care about the kids, he doesn’t care about her, he doesn’t care about crystal cove. Or maybe he does. Cassidy can’t pretend to understand what goes on in that head of his, but she can say with near certainty that this entire thing is for revenge. She can also say for certainty that she wasn’t going to let him do this by himself. 

She had two reasons for that. The first was the one she would admit to him. That she had admitted to him late that night. After Cassidy had brought out some wine for both of them and they had been drinking for an hour or two.

“You’re gonna get yourself killed, the way you’re going,” she had said, leaning back in her chair, arms crossed. His expression did not change, he brought the glass of wine he had to his lips, throwing his head back.

“That makes me no different from anyone else,” he said after a moment, his glass hitting the table with a soft thud.

“Don’t be cute,” she said, crossing her arms tighter.

“No, that’s your job,” he replied in a tone that was both soft and slightly sarcastic. His gaze refused to meet her eyes.

“ _ Ricky _ ,” she snapped, leaning forward so that he couldn’t avoid her eyes, “I’m being serious.”

“About what? My impending death?”

“Yes! What else would I be talking about?”

“I don’t know maybeー”

“Shut up, you know that’s not what I meant,” Cassidy retorted, her face heating up. One of the advantages of her dark skin was that when she blushed her face didn’t go red like Ricky’s face did, the disadvantage of knowing Ricky so long was that he knew she was blushing anyway. She snatched her wine glass from the table and took a long drink. He raised an eyebrow at her. 

“Hm, as for your prediction, I’m not worried.”

“How are you not worried? You know as well as I do that everyone who seeks out that treasure meets a bad end.”

“Everyone meets a bad end eventually, Angel, such is life.”

“Don’t be philosophical with me, Niesche, I’m too drunk for it right now.”

“My point is,” he said, throwing his hand in the air, “everyone dies, it’s unavoidable.”

“Yeah, but getting murdered by a parrot or a Freak is not the ideal way to go, E.”

“Leaving home as a 16 year old wasn’t ideal either.”

“Well, at least we’re in agreement there.”

“I really do wonder what the Freak will do to those kids.”

“Please stop,” she said, pressing a hand to her forehead. 

“Still kill them whether I stop or not,” he mumbled.

“ _ Ricky _ !”

“Alright, alright.”

“You are so melodramatic…’” she muttered, noticing that she had forgotten to draw the curtains.

“Am not.”

“Says the man who goes by Mr. E,” Cassidy said with a laugh. She stood, stumbling just a little as she walked over to the curtains, her back to Ricky.

“Says the woman who gave me that name,” Ricky said, pushing himself up onto his feet, “besides, you still go by Angel. You have no room to talk.”

He had a point there. When they had been younger, his nickname for her had been Angel, because she was his guardian angel, and dynamite, because ‘you’re dynamite, Cassidy!’ her nickname for him had been E, and in Rick **y** , she had just shortened it. Then she had realized that Mr. E sounded like mystery and so she started calling Ricky her Mr. E. “You still kept it for the aesthetic.”

“Maybe, maybe not, but you kept Angel.”

“Yeah, Angel is a name,” she replied, her fingers on one hand fiddling with the fabric of the curtain, she gripped her wine glass with the other. Her legs trembled and she swayed, she leaned against the wall for support. She had just been a kid when she was first asked her name after leaving Crystal Cove, ‘Angel Dynamite!’ she had blurted out. She had never bothered to change it.

Ricky was now standing next to her, staring out the window that she had yet to close, it was raining, she had almost forgotten about the rain. “So it is, my little Angel, so it is.”

Cassidy pushed the curtain, it made the squealing noise that metal makes. It didn’t close all the way. Rain hit the window even harder than before. Then, a loud crash, and a flash of lightning from behind the now partially closed curtains.

“You gonna stay the night?”

“...I thought you wouldn’t want me too.”

“Yeah, I can’t exactly send you out in that weather,” she muttered as another deafening crash of thunder broke the silence, she took another sip of wine, “how did you get here anyway?”

“Train, then the bus.”

“Why’d you take a train?” Cassidy asked, shaking her head. Maybe she shouldn’t have drank, her world was starting to tilt just a little bit. Some of her wine splashed out of her glass, but she didn’t notice. 

“Mhm… I… don’t know,” Ricky replied, he had drunk even more than she had, he leaned an arm on the wall.

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

“Don’t they say that it’s the journey not the destination?”

“I guess someone must have said that.”

“Ralph Waldo Emerson did.”

“The philosopher? Why do you turn into a philosopher when you’re drunk?”

“That’s not philosophy, it’s  transcendentalism.”

“You hate transcendentalism, and transcendentalism’s just a specific philosophy, which you hate.” 

“How do you know I hate it?”

“Transcendentalism is all about inherent goodness in nature, of course you hate it.”

“Do you really think I'm so cynical?”

“Yes.”

“You wound me.”

“I never said you were wrong, I’d imagine dark romanticism is more your style.”

“...The opposite of transcendentalism?”

“Not quite?” Cassidy replied, staring at the ceiling as she tried to remember the definition, “it had elements of death and human nature,” she looked back at Ricky once the name of an author came to mind, “Edgar Allen Poe.”

“‘The cask of amontillado’?”

“Most people would say ‘The Raven’.”

“I think I’d like to avoid stories about talking birds for a while.”

“Even though a raven is not a parrot?” asked Cassidy, she smiled at Ricky's glare, “That's the one.”

“Why do  _ you  _ turn into a philosopher when you’re drunk?” 

“I mean you were the one who brought it up,” she said as he pushed himself off the wall to face her.

“You were the one who mentioned philosophy,” Ricky replied, Cassidy leaned closer to him.

“Do you remember when we did that project in highschool? You know, that one about transcendentalism and dark romanticism?” she asked, pushing herself off of the wall.

“The music project?” 

“Mhm,” Cassidy mumbled. They had been in history class learning about transcendentalism and dark romanticism and the effects they had on the 18th and 19th century. The teacher had let them pick partners. Brad and Judy were obvious, so that left Cassidy and Ricky. They had to pick a piece of media to present, either act it out or sing and dance, that had transcendentalist or dark romantic themes. Ricky and her both love music, so the singing and dancing was the obvious choice.

“Yes, I remember.”

“Brad and Judyー”

“Brad and Judy…”

“What scene did they even act out?”

“It doesn’t matter, it was horrible, they are horrible actors,” Ricky grumbled, “thank you for reminding me, when I had  _ almost  _ managed to purge it from my memory.” 

Cassidy laughed and put a hand on her hip, “we weren't much better, Ricky.”

“We certainly  _ sang  _ better, and we would have been fine dancingー”

“If you weren’t so nervous?” finished Cassidy as she stared into his eyes, he looked away, his face ever so slightly flushed, “don’t be embarrassed,  _ I  _ thought it was sweet.”

“Good for you,” Ricky still shuddered thinking back to it.

“It wasn’t so bad, E,” Cassidy assured, Ricky just grunted something under his breath, “E, you tripped and pulled me down, it wasn’t that serious.” They had been dancing to a random popular 80’s song when Ricky tripped, he started to fall on Cassidy, but jerked himself sideways because he was a foot and a half taller and afraid of hurting her. Unfortunately he forgot to let go of her hand so she fell on top of him, much to the entertainment of the class who already had started rumours of them dating.

“Embarrassing.”

Cassidy sighed, she looked around the room and remembered the radio she kept on the counter.

“Fine, you’re right, it was embarrassing,” Cassidy first took the empty glass that Ricky still had, then walked past Ricky to the radio, she flipped on and a song that was just ending started playing on a random channel, “I want a do over,” she declared, setting down the glasses.

Ricky started to speak, Cassidy walked back to him, offering her hand, “Angel…” his voice trailed off, “we’re both drunk.”

“Yeah, I know, do you honestly think we would do this sober?”

“No.” 

“It’s just dancing, Ricky, new memory for an old one,” he didn’t move. Cassidy slowly lowered her hand, she stepped back towards the radio to turn it off… when he marched forward.

“Cassidyー” his hand hesitantly came to rest in hers, dark, thin fingers tangled around pale, long fingers. His other hand came to rest on her waist, while her other hand went to his shoulder just as the first notes of a slow song started.

_ Does it smell like a school gymnasium in here? _

_ It's funny how they're all the same _

_ It's funny how you always remember _

_ And we've both done it all a hundred times before _

_ It's funny how I still forgot _

They had danced other times, other than for a project, but only one other time as teenagers. It had been at prom. Ricky took her, because he was an awkward, shy boy with no other friends, Cassidy said yes because she had had a crush on Ricky for years. Prom had been in Crystal Cove high’s gymnasium. Just as they started dancing, Cassidy was no longer 16 but she could almost feel Crystal Cove high’s hardwood floor beneath her feet. Ricky spun her in a slow circle.

_ It would be a hundred times easier _

_ If we were young again _

But they were not 16 anymore. It would be simpler if they were, if they were still innocent children dancing around the mutual crush they had on one another. Cassidy twirled, her hand still clutching Ricky’s raised above her head, Ricky released her waist and caught her again.

_ But as it is and it is _

They were 30 now, and they danced to a memory of being innocent and children. Nothing would ever bring back that innocence.

_ We're just two slow dancers, last ones out _

_ We're two slow dancers, last ones out _

Yet still, the thunder and rain continued, and they danced like they were 16 again.

_ And the ground has been slowly pulling us back down _

_ You see it on both our skin _

_ We get a few years and then it wants us back _

They were older, and changed, Ricky was no longer lanky, awkward, teenage boy Ricky Owens, but a tall, long haired Mr. E who dealt in secrets and shadows. She was no longer naive little Cassidy Williams, but Angel Dynamite, the strong, brave woman, who feared no monster. 

_ It would be a hundred times easier _

_ If we were young again _

_ But as it is _

_ And it is _

They were 30 now, and Cassidy still couldn’t bring herself to let him go. They circled each other much the same way that binary stars do. Never really able to shake the other away. Gravity or maybe fate was too strong to let them drift away. She brought the hand on his shoulder to his cheek. He blinked slowly.

_ To think that we could stay the same _

She would have sworn at 16 that they’d be together in that moment forever.

_ To think that we could stay the same _

After their daughter was kidnapped, after she failed her, she would have sworn she’d never see him again.

_ To think that we could stay the same _

but they weren’t the same people anymore.

_ But we're two slow dancers, last ones out _

Now they swayed around each other like they could pretend that the world didn’t exist.

_ We're two slow dancers, last ones out _

But it did, and they were still trapped in a complicated mess of emotions and feelings.

_ Two slow dancers, last ones out _

The final notes of the song faded, they stopped dancing and for a moment, they just held onto one another. Cassidy used her hand on Ricky’s face to get him to look at her. He bowed his head down, his forehead coming to rest against hers, his eyes closed. She was so close to him, that she could feel his heart beating rapidly through his wrist and his warm breath on her face. She had no sense of smell, but if she had she would have been able to smell the alcohol on his breath.

She loved him. That was why she was willing to go back, she  _ still  _ loved him and she didn’t want him to die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song is Mitski "Two Slow Dancers" here's the link for anyone who wants to listen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUfkfJfsKrc


End file.
